Special Collections Rare Book Collections

Rare Book Collections

Special Collections includes a large, general collection of rare books and several smaller, named collections. The collections concern a range of subjects and include a variety of materials, such as medieval manuscripts, early printed books, fine press imprints, modern first editions, paperback fiction, popular magazines and zines. Selected collections have been fully cataloged in the UO Libraries catalog and may be searched by keyword for collection title. Materials in uncataloged collections may be accessed by guides in Special Collections.

Collection includes more than 3,500 books, periodicals, and pamphlets written in or about the artificial language of Esperanto.

Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian

Special Collections and University Archives is delighted to have one of the finest and most important copies of Edward S. Curtis’s The North American Indian. This set of folios and quartos is extremely fragile and irreplaceable. In order to ensure that these volumes are available for future generations of students and scholars, we must carefully control access to and use of the materials.

In addition to the original edition of The North American Indian, we also have a 1970s reprint of the entire set available to all researchers in our Paulson Reading Room. Digital reproductions of photogravures from Curtis’s The North American Indian can also be viewed online at Northwestern University Library’s website, through the Library of Congress’s American Memory project. You can learn more about Curtis and access the images here.

We request that anyone interested in doing research on the original Curtis folios and quartos in Special Collections and University Archives first consult the reprint volumes in the Paulson Reading Room or the online images. If a researcher still finds it necessary to see the original photogravures, he or she must submit a written request describing the research project and need to use the originals. Please send this request to spcarref@uoregon.edu. Curatorial staff will review the request and work with the researcher.

In cases where a compelling research need to see the original Curtis materials is not demonstrated, readers will be invited to attend a special viewing day where selections from the original set of Curtis’s The North American Indian. If you are interested in learning when the next showing will be, please contact us at:spcarref@uoregon.edu. Additional information about the Curtis volumes is highlighted in our blog here.

Our staff will also be teaching an Insight Seminar on the Curtis volumes on May 3, 2014, 9:15 - 4:30. If interested full details and information about how to register can be found here.

Dunn Collection

Collection of Victorian-era English literature and historical novels.

Ernest W. Haycox Library

Catalog RecordExhibit Web Page
Collection comprises the research library of Western writer Ernest W. Haycox and includes over 2,000 books and periodicals on the West, many of which are rare or scarce.

Collection comprises 575 volumes on Asian art collected by Gertrude Bass Warner to support the Asian art collections of the University of Oregon Art Museum. [See also the Gertrude Bass Warner papers, Records of the Art Museum, and the Warner Lantern Slide collection]

Collection comprises William A. Quayle's library of 500 titles illustrating the history of printing and the printed book, 31 titles authored by Quayle from 1897 to 1925, and a biography of Quayle. Collection includes early imprints, fine press imprints, fine bindings, and literary first editions.

Presented in celebration of the 60th Anniversary of His Majesty King Bhumibol's accession to the throne of Thailand. Given to the University of Oregon by the Rajaprajanugroh Foundation under royal patronage, Distance Learning Foundation and Thailand's Royal Palace, and facilitated by the US-Thai Distance Learning Organization.

SCA Rare Books DS586 .C66 2006 (2 copies)

SCA Rare Books DS582 .C574 2004

SCA Rare Books DS586 .P562 1999

SCA Rare Books DS582 .S55 1999

SCA Rare Books DS561 .S29 7 (2525

SCA Rare Books DS561 .S29 8 (2526)

Zines

Collection comprises self-published literary, artistic, and political magazines from the 1960s to the present.